[Infowarrior] - Net Monitoring May Be Authorized by Stimulus Amendment

[Richard Forno]

Alert! - Internet Monitoring May Be Authorized by Stimulus Amendment

http://lauren.vortex.com/archive/000505.html


Greetings. We've all heard about nasty items being sneaked into the  
federal economic stimulus package, now in final negotiations between  
the House and Senate. What you probably haven't heard is that Senator  
Feinstein of here in California (who usually has good ideas, but  
occasionally brings forth legislative aberrations) has apparently  
tried to slip a provision into the legislation that could open to the  
door to widespread monitoring of Internet traffic by ISPs.

The amendment, seemingly offered without any public debate, would  
require that the Broadband Technology Opportunities Program (that is,  
the broadband stimulus portion of the overall stimulus legislation)  
permit "reasonable network management practices such as deterring  
unlawful activity, including [c-porn] and copyright infringement."

The possibility exists that this amendment will find its way into the  
final wording of the stimulus package being worked on by the House/ 
Senate conference committee, which could be finalized by the end of  
today.

You'll note that the term "monitoring" is not included in the very  
short wording of the amendment. But the term "network management" is a  
can of worms. If the amendment's sponsors had only wanted to assure  
that existing mechanisms for DMCA (and other) "take down" notices  
would be protected, they could have said this explicitly.

But content-related "network management" implies active inspection  
(e.g. DPI - Deep Packet Inspection") of actual Internet traffic at the  
IP level, then the reporting to authorities of, and/or blocking of,  
associated "offending" data traffic.

It was to be expected that c-porn would be the hook used as the first  
item to try justify Internet monitoring. But by then moving to  
copyright infringement and any other "unlawful activity," the camel's  
nose has come explicitly much farther under the tent toward the  
possibility of pervasive Internet monitoring.

Of course, we know that any such monitoring would likely find itself  
deeply embroiled in court battles, and readily available encryption  
foils such techniques as a matter of course.

But this amendment, as worded, appears to set a very dangerous  
precedent. Again, if its sponsors didn't intend to potentially open a  
Pandora's Box of Internet monitoring, the term "network management"  
shouldn't have been used in this manner.

As other observers have also alerted, this amendment should  
immediately be withdrawn from any consideration, and defeated in its  
current form.